Chapter XVI: Senatorial Battles for Social Justice

I

Senator Kern carried into the senate the keen sense of social justice, and the sympathy for the lowly which had characterized him through life, and during his term in the senate there was no controversy involving the rights or interests of the working classes in which he did not take an active interest. While no service he rendered to the workers required the courage called for in the battle against feudalism in the Paint Creek settlement of West Virginia, this was by no means an isolated instance of devotion to their cause. Nor was this in any sense a pose for political effect. He had an inherent hatred of oppression of the weak on the part of the powerful, and was temperamentally incapable of understanding the indifference of others. When during the pendency of the anti-trust bill letters poured in upon him urging that trade unions be placed in the same category with trusts, formed for the purpose of arbitrarily fixing prices and exploiting the consumers, he made no attempt to conceal his disgust. The insistence of some law-makers that the rights of man should be weighed in the same scale with the privileges of property, translated in the vocabulary of some into “rights,” aroused his wrath.

In the mid-summer of 1914 an incident occurred in the senate during the consideration of the sundry civil appropriation bill which, more than any other one thing perhaps revealed Senator Kern’s attitude toward the social and economic problems of the country. Some time before, the congress had created an Industrial Relations Commission and President Wilson had appointed as its chairman Frank P. Walsh of Kansas City, a lawyer of unusual ability who thought in terms of humanity--the ideal man for the position. This was one of the commissions that could be made worthless or worth while, according to the disposition of its membership, and the president had appointed a chairman who made everything worth while that he touched. He accepted his duties seriously and set to work in the most thorough and exhaustive fashion to probe to the bottom of the social and industrial problems of America. Within a few months he had accomplished enough to attract the attention of thinkers, social workers and economists to his work. The conditions he disclosed were in some instances startling. Senator Kern, who had sympathized with the purpose of the commission, read in manuscript the evidence taken by the commission at Philadelphia and was delighted with the spirit with which it approached its task, and impressed with the enormous possibilities for good from such an expose of evils.

He had enough faith in human nature to feel assured that ameliatory legislation would always follow the realization of its necessity as a result of the pressure of public opinion. He felt that many of the social and economic wrongs are permitted to exist merely because the public knows little about them, or knows them only as isolated cases of viciousness or injustice. He knew that the elements or interests that are the beneficiaries of such wrongs are vitally concerned in their concealment. And Mr. Walsh was seriously interfering with their peace of mind. The press was beginning to give considerable publicity to his work. The working class was intensely interested. Even the colleges were taking notice.

The result was the beginning of a propaganda to discredit the work of the commission, by picturing Walsh as a dangerous visionary, more or less socialistic, whose work was merely calculated to create bad blood between the employers and the employees. One feature of the propaganda was to create the impression that the commission was accomplishing nothing worth while and that public money was being squandered uselessly. “Why should such a commission be continued, anyway?”

When the sundry civil appropriation bill was under consideration by the senate July 7, 1914, Senator Borah of Idaho, whose views on social justice closely resembled those of Senator Kern, called attention to the action of the Appropriations committee in cutting the appropriation for the commission from $200,000 to a paltry $50,000, which was equivalent to blotting it out entirely. With the appropriation previously made it had been utterly impossible to print the evidence taken at the various hearings. The reduction of the appropriation as proposed would have had the effect of destroying the commission utterly. If such was not the intention of the committee it was the desire of some members of the senate who feared the effect of the expose of the conditions of child labor and in the sweat shops and death traps where women are worked for a miserable pittance under conditions of sanitation disgraceful to the age.

In explaining the action of the committee Senator Martin of Virginia said that it was of the opinion that “no good was being derived correspondingly to that appropriation,” and expressed his personal doubt as to the work of the commission being “advantageous to the public.” Asked by Senator Borah whether the commission had been consulted as to the reasons for the larger appropriation, Senator Martin replied that it had not.

It was at this juncture that Senator Kern entered the debate with a warm commendation of the work and purposes of the commission.

As the fight developed--it consumed the greater part of the day--all those senators particularly interested in a program of social justice took part in the debate against the committee amendment, basing their arguments on the ground that society is entitled to all possible light on industrial conditions to the end that ameliatory legislation may reach the vicious features. The amendment was defeated with a decisive vote of 46 to 18, but would probably have gone through but for the fact that Kern and Borah led an aggressive fight against it.

Thus the commission was saved.

This position in regard to the commission is a fair indication of Kern’s attitude toward the problems, the wrongs and rights, of the men, women and children who earn their bread by the labor of their hands. And this attitude was consistently maintained, not only throughout his senatorial career, but throughout his life. This feeling grew stronger as he grew older instead of moderating with the chilling of the fire of youth, and he was never more radical along these lines than on the day he left the senate.

II

After his services to the miners of West Virginia Senator Kern’s most distinguished service to the toilers was in the part he played in securing the enactment of the Seamen’s bill, which was signed by President Wilson in the spring of 1915. The story of that measure reads like a romance. One of the unaccountable neglects of a humane civilization had been its utter indifference to the insufferable wrongs of the men who “go out upon the sea in ships.” The toilers of the land had been lifted from the degradation once associated with labor, but the toilers of the sea were left in servitude, not only with the knowledge but with the active connivance of governments. Underpaid, improperly fed, they were so much the slaves of the masters of the ships that a member of a crew deciding in port to sever his connection with the vessel was treated as the fugitive slaves before the war--hunted down by police officers and returned as escaped criminals to their masters. This impossible life gradually drove the more competent seamen from the waters and the traveling public paid the penalty in increased disasters. From 1860 until 1914 every succeeding record of lives lost at sea was lengthened, notwithstanding the better equipment of the boats. The rule that the wage fixed should be the wage paid at the port of employment led the ship owners to the manning of their vessels in ports where the scale of living was lowest, and the result was that the poorest seamen were entrusted with the lives of travelers. The ship owners only concerned themselves with profits. One of the reasons for the decline of our merchant marine was the refusal of Americans to take service on ships at the meager wage paid, and we entered into a treaty to arrest, detain and return deserters from ships in American ports. Thus we deliberately entered into a conspiracy against ourselves; for if the men employed in low-wage ports deserted in an American port and the master of the ship was forced to man his vessel here he would have to pay the higher wage and thus the equalization of wages for seamen on a higher plane would result. We helped to keep the scale of wages down below the American standard and thereby deliberately forced American sailors from the sea. Before President Wilson signed the Seamen’s bill of 1917 the sailors of the world were slaves.

The battle to right this wrong was waged for years through the patience and perseverance of one of the most remarkable lobbyists that ever haunted the capitol at Washington. Only a Victor Hugo could adequately tell the tale of Andrew Furseth.

Born in Norway, the Viking blood in his veins, he went to sea at the age of sixteen. He loved the sea. It was a hereditary passion. Standing on the shore and looking out to where the sky and waters met he thought he saw in the life of the sea the free life--and he had a passion for freedom. He soon discovered the tragic truth--he was the slave of the master of the ship.

“I saw men abused, beaten into insensibility,” he said. “I saw sailors try to escape from brutal masters and from unseaworthy vessels upon which they had been lured to serve. I saw them hunted down and thrown into the ship’s hold in chains. I know the bitterness of it all from experience.”

And he had seen over-insured and under-manned ships go down at sea because greedy owners would not furnish skilled seamen or provide lifeboats. He had lived to see white labor driven out by the shipping trust to make way for oriental slaves, and the sea power moving unmistakably to the orient as a result.

This condition was all the more bitter to Andrew Furseth, for he knew and loved the sea and its romantic history and knew that seamen had once been free men. He determined to dedicate his life to doing for the seamen what Lincoln did for the slaves, and he landed on the Pacific coast of America.

“For the seamen of the world,” wrote John L. Mathews in _Everybody’s Magazine_, “the most important event of the nineteenth century was the coming ashore of Andrew Furseth.”

His first step was to challenge the greed of the shipping interests by organizing the seamen along the coast. The organization was small and its membership pitifully poor, and it faced the bitter hostility of powerful interests and a prejudiced or subsidized press.

Knowing that the seamen of the world would not be freed by his little organization alone, he went to Washington as its representative. That was in 1894. The following twenty-one years of Furseth’s life mark the greatness of the man. So low had the seaman fallen in the estimation of the world that this man with no other motive than to secure the enactment of legislation was under police espionage and for years was shadowed by detectives. His persecutors wasted money--his life was in the open. Year after year he pressed his case on members of the congress. Many were openly hostile. Some mildly curious. None greatly interested. Sometimes his bill was introduced and quietly smothered in committee. Sometimes he could find no one to present it. Men of less heroic mould have succumbed to despair. Furseth never despaired. He never stormed at fate. He persevered. He was like the character in Hugo’s Toilers of the Sea.

Working for a ridiculously small salary, when hard times came upon the country he voluntarily cut his own pay. With no small vices to feed, he found he could exist on next to nothing in a sailors’ boarding house. Asked once if he had laid anything aside for old age, he made an answer that deserves to live:

“When my work is finished, I hope to be finished. I have made no provision against old age, and I shall borrow no fears from time.”

At length he forced attention. The Democratic party in its Baltimore convention incorporated a plank in its platform which pledged the party to the abrogation of treaties obligating the United States to hunt down and return as criminals the deserters from foreign ships in American ports and to general legislation in the interest of the seamen. Senator Lafollette introduced the Seaman’s bill.

That, however, was only a beginning and did not necessarily signify anything. The bill was certain to encounter the most bitter opposition of the most powerful interests, and senators naturally ultra-conservative were certain to find plausible reasons for opposition in the protests of foreign governments. The only hope was in enlisting the active sympathy and interest of an influential leader of the majority, and Furseth was urged to present his case to Senator Kern.

I shall let Furseth tell the story of his first call on Kern:

“Shortly after the senator came to the senate I went to him and
asked his permission to tell him about the seamen. He had no time
then, but told me to come to his hotel. Upon my arrival at the
appointed time I told him it would take me at least twenty minutes
to give him some idea of what I had to say. He told me to go ahead.
I did and I was with him for about an hour and a half. In a quiet
easy way he encouraged me to talk, and I told him about the
seaman’s daily life on the vessel, but more so on the shore. At
sea, the terrible quarters, the ceaseless toil, the poor food, the
general treatment and the longing to get away from the life which
was degraded by involuntary servitude and a feeling of
helplessness. On shore, the power of the Crimp to dictate our wages
and take away what we were to earn in the form of advance or
‘allotment to the original creditor,’ as the thing was called; the
power to compel us to go to sea in any vessel and with any kind of
men--destitute poor devils who set our wages when we were hired and
whose work we had to do at sea because they could not. With it all
a feeling that we were forgotten by God and held in bitter contempt
by men on shore. When I stopped he would ask a question and set me
going again, and then he said--‘I shall see whether we can not help
you.’

“And he certainly did. I tried not to go to him too often; but it
was often and he was always kind and encouraging. I always left him
with more hope in my heart, and sometimes I needed it sorely. If
God ever placed upon the shoulders of men a part of the burdens of
others the senator was surely one of those men. My burden was
always lighter and my heart more free when I left him.

“There never was anything that he could personally do to help
getting the Seaman’s bill through that he did not do. He helped to
get the bill considered. He helped to get it passed. He saved it
when the London Convention and the treaty adopted there was about
to strangle it for good. If that treaty had been adopted the
Seamen’s bill could never have been passed. That treaty was
designed to keep the Americans from the sea, and if the United
States now has the men needed or is able to get them, not only the
seamen, but this nation owes the thanks therefor to Senator Kern.”

After the bill had passed both branches of the congress and went to the president for his signature the most remarkable efforts were made to persuade President Wilson to veto it. These efforts were made by the most powerful influences that think in terms of money rather than in terms of humanity. The National Chamber of Commerce took an active part in condemnation of the act. Delegations called at the White House to assure the president that the law would destroy American commerce.

It was at this juncture that Senator Kern rendered his last great service to the seamen. At the head of seven or eight senators he called at the White House to urge the president to sign the bill. It was signed on March 4th.

The Seamen’s law, which is the Magna Charta of seamen’s rights, would sooner or later have been enacted because ordinary humanity demanded it, but the interest of Senator Kern in its passage unquestionably hastened the breaking of the chains of the slaves of the sea. No one was in the position to proportion the credit that Furseth was and it is enough for the historian to know that the three men who received in largest measure the gratitude of the old Norseman were President Wilson, Robert M. Lafollette and John W. Kern. One year after the law had gone into effect, and two months after Senator Kern’s defeat for re-election to the senate, the man whose “coming ashore” was the “greatest event of the nineteenth century” to the seamen of the world wrote:

“WASHINGTON, D. C., Dec. 31, 1916.

“Hon. John W. Kern, U. S. Senate:

“MY DEAR SENATOR--The seamen have lived through one year in
freedom, in hope, and in gratitude to you. On their behalf and for
myself I wish you a blessed New Year and all the happiness that can
come to those who feel the pain of others. May God in his mercy to
us and to all who toil preserve you in health and strength to fight
on for man’s freedom.

“Faithfully and respectfully yours,

“ANDREW FURSETH.”

III

In the summer of 1916 a bill bearing the names of Senator Kern and Representative McGillicudy of Maine and affecting the interests of 400,000 people was enacted into law. The passage of this bill, the Kern-McGillicudy Workman’s Compensation bill, was many years over due.

“It has been disgraceful,” he said in the senate, “that the great government of the United States has lagged behind every nation in the world, civilized and half-civilized, except Turkey, in the care it has given to the people who are employed by it.”

About this time he was making a futile effort to secure adequate compensation for an Indianian who had been hopelessly crippled by an accident in Panama while in the government service, and the difficulties he encountered outraged his sense of decency and justice.

When the bill reached the amendment stage, it was due to the vigilance of Senator Kern that it was not emasculated by amendments, offered in good faith, no doubt, but utterly destructive. Senator Smith of Georgia insisted upon writing a contributory negligence clause into the bill. This was earnestly contested by Senator Kern on the ground that while there might be some justification for such a clause in an employers’ liability law, it would defeat the purpose of a government workman’s compensation act, and would deprive the government employee of the sense of absolute security to which he was entitled.

And he just as vigorously opposed the proposal of Senator Cummins to have the law administered by a bureau instead of by a special commission.

During his service in the senate he never ceased to marvel at the light manner in which hundreds of thousands of dollars were appropriated for elaborate postoffice buildings where a very simple and inexpensive one would do, and the pitiful parsimony with which some statesmen were inclined to deal with expenses incidental to the legal protection of the lives and interests of the workingmen.

The measure was finally passed in August, 1916, in practically the form in which it was presented, carrying with it an inestimable boon to 400,000 men and women who were doing the civil work of the nation.

IV

During the same summer Senator Kern made his heaviest contribution to humanity in the part he played in forcing the consideration and passage of the child labor law. This was a subject that had been near his heart for many years, and we have seen that almost a quarter of a century before while a member of the state senate he had fought to place a child labor law upon the statutes of the state. For many years efforts were made from time to time to pass a child labor law, but without results. The public opinion of the republic had long been crystallized against the exploitation of childhood, and social workers had accumulated the most damning evidence against the system, but the statesmen seemed impervious to the pity of it, and cynically found excuses for non-activity. But a few years before Senator Kern had listened to the witnesses called by the House committee investigating the strike in the mills of Lawrence, Massachusetts, and had been sickened by the sight of pale, aenemic, underfed, overworked children who were actually forced to pay for the cold water that they drank while at work in the mills. He hated the exploitation of childhood with a holy hate, and one of his ambitions was to be able to strike a blow at the system while in the senate.

One day in the summer of 1916, at a time when senators and congressmen were anxious to get back to their constituents in preparation for the campaign, and with the program already crowded, the congress and the country were electrified by the action of President Wilson in demanding action upon the child labor bill then pending in the senate. Without warning he appeared at the capitol one afternoon and repaired to the president’s room, where he had grown accustomed to hold important conferences on legislation, contrary to the custom of his predecessor, and summoned Senator Kern. The senator was first informed of the president’s presence at the capitol by a page who had been hailed by the executive and asked if he would inform Senator Kern that he was wanted in the little room, with its Brumidi decorations, beyond the Marble Room. There was a brief conference, after which other senators were summoned, and the word flashed over the country that the president had created another stumbling block to adjournment by insisting upon the passage of the child labor law. From that time on Kern exerted himself to the utmost in pressing for action.

But behind that incident there was another which throws more light on the importance of the part played by Senator Kern in forcing a child labor law upon the books. Some time before the Democratic senators had held a caucus to determine upon the legislative program for the remainder of the session, and Kern had made an earnest plea for the consideration of the child labor bill. He had met with a stubborn opposition, for there were states represented in that caucus in which the factories were operated to a large degree by child labor. Indeed it had come to be a favorite sneer of the socialists that the Democratic party could never be counted upon to rid the nation of that evil because of the opposition of the industrial interests of certain southern states. In the caucus Senator Kern not only urged this as a political reason for action, and made a personal appeal on the ground that failure to act would probably lose Indiana to the Democracy in the campaign of the fall and defeat him for re-election. But the opponents of such legislation were adamant and the caucus adjourned with no provision for child labor legislation and with the decision to not take up the immigration bill until in December.

Soon after this President Wilson made his call at the capitol; and a little later a few Democratic senators, regardless of the caucus action, voted to call the immigration bill before the senate, and the protest of Senator Kern, together with the excoriation of the recalcitrant senators by Senator Stone, impelled the men who disregarded the caucus action to defend themselves. In the course of Senator Vardaman’s defense he dropped the curtain on the proceedings of the caucus, and incidentally threw light on the prominence of the part played by Senator Kern in forcing labor legislation upon the statutes.

“I remember distinctly,” he said, “that the senior senator from Indiana stated to the caucus that a failure to pass the child labor bill would militate very much against the Democratic party in Indiana and would probably defeat him for re-election. But the caucus adjourned with a program agreed upon which left out the consideration at this session of the child labor and immigration bills. The next morning I heard that the distinguished senator from Indiana--the Democratic leader, mind you--was very much dissatisfied with the caucus action and was busily engaging himself trying to create sentiment in favor of rescinding the action of the caucus of the evening before. It was also whispered that the president would be invited to take a hand in order to save the senator from Indiana from the evil effects of non-action upon the child labor bill. The correctness of these rumors was soon verified. In due time the president of the United States appeared at the capitol and called certain senators into consultation. But as to what he said--or ordered--I am not at liberty to speak, since I was not one of the senators consulted.”

We can do no better than permit the Mississippi senator to serve us as reporter of Senator Kern’s position in the caucus, and his activities after the caucus to bring about such a reconsideration as to include in the program for the session the consideration of the child labor bill. And the Mississippian’s interpretation of the action of the president, it may be added, was shared by others who were chagrined at his interference in the program. However that may be, it may be said that Senator Kern and the president were in whole-hearted accord on the child labor bill and that their joint work was largely responsible for the passage of the bill.

That the country generally at the time looked upon Kern as the leader in the fight for the child labor bill was soon evident in the disposition of both the friends and enemies of the proposed legislation to attempt to influence him through propaganda. While it had always been his policy to submit petitions and protests to the senate, regardless of his individual opinion on the matter involved, on the broad ground that the people were entitled to the right of petition, so profound was his hate of child exploitation and so intense his contempt for those who tried to prevent it, that he refused to burden the Record with the protests. In only one instance did he give any attention to the letters of the defenders of the exploiters of childhood. A minister in a southern community had written him a sanctimoniously worded letter on the beauties of child slavery, on the philanthropy of the mill owners in preventing the starvation of families by permitting children scarcely in their teens to work for a pittance in the mills, and this aroused his wrath because it came from a minister of the Gospel. For ministerial defenders of inhumanity he had no words with which to measure his contempt. In this instance he did attempt to give expression to his personal contempt for the minister in a letter of withering sarcasm, and this letter he gave to the press. Among the men of importance who wired him in the interest of the bill were Charles W. Eliot, the famous educator, Rabbi Stephen S. Wise and the Rev. Lyman Abbott of The Outlook, and he put their pleas in the Record. Of especial value, from his point of view, as supporting the position he had taken in the caucus when he had been outvoted by his party colleagues, was the telegram of President Eliot:

“I venture to express the opinion, in view of the coming
presidential election, it would be very unwise to postpone the
passage of the child labor bill until December next. The Democratic
party needs the support next November of the numerous Republicans
and progressives who are interested in child labor legislation. The
party has nothing to lose by passing the bill and possibly much to
gain.”

This view Kern persistently pressed upon such Democratic senators as held back, and the bill was finally taken up and passed with so little opposition on the floor as to be a marvel to those who had striven for a decade to interest the congress in such legislation. Here, as in many other cases, the work of Senator Kern was effective and important, but not done in the limelight, and the general public in rejoicing over the enactment of the law manifested no special appreciation of the services of Kern. This did not concern him in the least. It was enough for him to know that the blow at child slavery had been struck. In his speeches in the campaign of 1916 he dwelt to some extent upon the passage of the child labor bill, but never once did he give any indication that his part in its passage was greater than that of the senator who merely voted for the bill.

Nevertheless his was an important and a leading part.